DARDANELLE — Patsy George was in Nashville, Tenn., visiting her brother for Christmas when she received a phone call from her husband. He didn’t normally open her mail, but when he saw a letter from the Dardanelle Chamber of Commerce, curiosity got the better of him.

“I said, ‘Well, read it to me,’” George said.

And he did. The letter informed George that she had been named Dardanelle’s Citizen of the Year.

“It was a shock,” she said. “I said, ‘This is a joke,’ and he said, ‘No, it’s really true.’”

George, a longtime resident of Dardanelle and employee of the Dardanelle School District, felt honored to earn the prestigious distinction, which marked a culmination of nearly a half-century of work with children in Yell County.

“[Being named Citizen of the Year] is great. You know, I love people, and I love my work,” she said. “It’s the greatest reward I’ve ever been given. It makes me feel like people know what I’m doing.”

But she found herself stressing about receiving the award in the weeks leading up to the banquet. She considers herself sociable but dislikes being the center of attention.

“I hoped I didn’t have to make a speech, but I made a real short one just in case,” she said. “Other people came up and didn’t make speeches, so I felt better about it. When the time came, I just turned towards the audience and said ‘thank you very much.’”

Following her graduation from Arkansas Tech University with a bachelor’s in education, George landed her first teaching job in 1951. She had plenty of practice teaching from her childhood, however, as she would regularly “play school.”

“I would play school when I was a little girl,” she said. “I would have books and dolls, and I would pretend I was the teacher. Sometimes, when I got a little older, I would bring books and papers and things home, and I would pretend that I had students.”

Her passion for teaching spawned, as it does with many in the profession, for the love of kids.

“I love children,” she said. “It was good to see the children learn.”

She worked at a variety of jobs throughout the city’s education system, including working at the Dardanelle Elementary School, the Primary School, and as the supervisor of an Arvac Daycare Center.

When she took off work to raise her family, she still found herself teaching youngsters. In a time before kindergartens had become the norm in Yell County, she taught kindergarten classes out of her house.

After working as a teacher’s aid at the primary school for six years, she decided to take a hiatus from teaching. Then, in 1982, she got a phone call about a migrant education program the primary school was going to implement. They wanted to know if she would come back to work.

“I started 31 years ago in this program, and I’ve been here ever since,” she said. “Clerk and tutor, I guess is my title.”

Throughout her tenure at the school, George has also been an officer in PTA and the Band Club, and it was this dedication to her job both during and after work hours that attracted the Chamber of Commerce’s attention.

George gives thanks to God, “who was with me through all of this,” as well as her friends and fellow teachers. She had one word to describe her feelings towards winning the award: honored.

“I’m just really honored that I’ve been in the paper so many times,” she said. “I just feel so honored. This happens to other people, not to me.”